Intelligence, Not Optional!
by NEVER.after.ever.BLACK
Summary: How Harry Potter truly lived.
_Disclaimer, J K Rowling is the original aurther of Harry Potter, books 1 - 7._

 **Intelligence, Not Optional!**

Number 4, Privet Drive was quiet for once. No telly blatting. No computer game making a ruckus throughout the entire house. No incessant whing from the Dursley's one and only son, Dudley. For the first time since the start of the holiday Number 4 was vacated. Well, relatively at any rate. To most of the residents of Privet Drive the Dursley's nephew hardly counted as anything more than a lawn ornament with scrawny hands perpetually dug deep in Number 4's flowerbeds.

Today, Harry was locked out of the house and set with a different task. He scowled at the fence before him and proceeded to glare down at the paint can that had been shoved into his arms as his Uncle Vernon informed him that he was taking Dudley and rat face, a.k.a. Pierce Polkiss, to the Zoo for Dudley's 11th birthday.

"What in the fuck am I suppose use for a brush?" Harry asked the still machine sealed paint can. It gave no answer. He felt like chucking it out in the middle of the road. Only the knowledge that his uncle was 700 times bigger than him prevented him from truly entertaining that thought.

The task of repainting the fencing around Number 4's front yard, Harry decided with every ounce of certainty a ten year old could possess, was impossible, futile, a big huge not happening.

Harry decided the park was a much better option, marched over to the center of the end of the drive, set the paint can right where his uncle would be sure not to miss it, and headed off up the walk. A whistling tune came to his lips and before he knew it he was skipping along, playing a makeshift form of hopscotch using the cracks in the pavement.

Later that night saw Harry smarting from the spanking he'd gotten for not painting the fence like his uncle had wanted. He sat on his rickety bed in the smallest bedroom of the house, the room only just be-quested to him last summer when he out grew his cupboard, pouting and glaring at his locked from the outside bedroom door.

This was not an unusual occurrence for the boy. Just last week Harry had had such a terrible spanking that he had been left with whelts on his rump for three days and bruises that hadn't entirely faded. The door was always locked at night, a tradition carried over from his days existing as the ghoul living under the stairs.

Not that Harry ever informed his uncle that he felt like a ghoul, considering the man was highly superstitious and jumped at his own shadow. But what really made him keep his trap shut on the matter was the fact that Uncle Vernon loved to yell "There is no such thing as magic!", spittle flying and completely enraged, every time Harry or Dudley even began to bring up, let alone talk about, the one, only one, time the two had watch Fantasia on the telly way back when they were five. By now, Harry was sooo over it.

Painting the fence became Harry's six a.m. wake up call the following morning, just as he had been informed it would be the night before after his spanking. Around noon, Number 4, Privet Drive returned to its noisy state with the rather abrupt screaming, so Harry thought, having practically jumping out of his shirt at the yell of his cousin telling his mum ever so politely that he didn't want flapjacks for breakfast. The next thing anyone on Privet Drive knew the living room telly of Number 4 was blaring on its accustom high with Thursday lunch hour cartoons. Aunt Petunia had of course vacuumed that morning, like she did every morning, but the whing of the vacuum's motor was nothing compared to Dudley's awakening. Unlike the fat boy's yelling and the telly on high disturbing the whole street, the vacuum had only disturbed Harry's peace and quiet out in the early haze of the morning sanding away on a decade's old wood planks.

It was with his completion of painting the fence two days after he had initially been set the task that Harry's summer holiday returned to its usual routine of him tending the flowerbeds and keeping the front and back lawns manicured to perfection, while hoping against hope that Dudley would choke on his fish sticks and just maybe the telly would blow up in his chubby cheeked face and bring the boy back to the reality that he wasn't the only resident to reside within Little Whinging. After all, for all Harry knew Dudley was the source of the col-de-sac's naming. He didn't want to find out what kind of neighborhood menace lived in Greater Whinging.

Harry shuddered at the thought, surely there couldn't be a greater ponce than Dudley. But then again, it had to be called Greater Whinging for a reason. He shrugged. He had no plans of moving col-de-sacs any time soon. He was safe for now with his whale of a cousin. The art of Dudley avoidance was quite simple. You run, run like hell and listen for the wheezing.

The click of the mail slot perked Harry's ears. His chores got him up and outside early, but Aunt Petunia wasn't so cold-hearted not to set him breakfast. The mail arriving was his meal call. He dusted his hands on his trousers and pushed himself to stand. Weeding the begonias would have to wait.

The smell of eggs and bacon hit Harry as he entered the back door and kicked off his trainers. At the opposite end of the hall, the mail laid sprawled across the maroon welcome mat his uncle's sister, Marge, had given Aunt Petunia two Christmases ago.

As he had begun to do, Harry shuffled through the letters. In the last three months, he had figured out where his uncle does his banking, who his relatives had their mortgage through, and learned the name of the electric company that serviced the area.

Harry paused and furrowed his brow at a brown envelope. It had his name written in emerald ink, no return address or stamp, and was strangely addressed down to 'the smallest bedroom'.

Dudley, Dudley had to be behind this nonsense, Harry was sure of it. He never got letters and it was right up Dudley's alley to point out his misfortune of a room.

Harry ripped open the envelope, wondering who his cousin had put up to the prank. After all, Dudley was in Pierce' s sister's good graces, but Harry was pretty sure that was because Dudley sneaked her Aunt Petunia's cigarettes at every opportunity he got. Harry, in turn, often got blamed for the missing packs of cigarettes. In self-defense, he had taken to the practice of making his aunt think she was becoming as forgetful as shit, often telling her that he'd seen them in her purse or on the coffee table. By luck she always found a pack.

"Yeah fucking right!" Harry decided the letter was for the trash at its opening line of 'HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY.' He crumpled the letter up and stuffed it in his back pocket.

As mornings usually went, Harry traded the mail for his breakfast and headed back outside to eat in the cool air of the back patio. When he brought his plate back inside, he casually chucked the letter and buried it with his left overs. Dudley wasn't going to get a one over on him on this one. His uncle wasn't going to know about the 'magical' letter mysteriously materializing through the mail slot that was for sure.


End file.
